What does it mean to be fully
unplugged and present? I dunno. I admit that when I took the
Red Pill there were some blue specks in it. Hey, I had a cold and
I thought it was a Contac. But these three articles describe
living and lives that are probably a little more plugged
into The Matrix World than yours or mine.

Featured are a book review, the story of a
con man who convinced people for years at a time that they
were being followed by terrorists, and notes from the
"hey no one loves elvis more than i do but this is a little
too much" file.

Bret Easton Ellis castigates and/or wallows in consumer
Babylon

I Know What You Bought Last Summer

The pleasurable tension of a Bret Easton Ellis novel lies
between what it seems to be (a laundry list of luxury products)
and what he must intend it to be (a searing indictment of a
materialist culture). Does B.E.E. intend to castigate a puerile,
shopping-crazed America, or does he just personify it?

Essaying the Age of Terror, B.E.E. has found an exquisitely
terrifying genre of Stuff to Enumerate: kiddie items. In his new LunarPark, a coke-, booze- and Xanax-stuffed writer named Bret Easton
Ellis leaves his chic bisexual pill-popping lifestyle for a house
in the exurbs, shared with a warm and apparently sexless Ashley
Judd-type movie star. There, to his horror and ours, B.E.E. is
able not to rattle off the brand names of high-priced appliances
(as in American Psycho) or C-list celebs bounding into B-list
nightclubs (as in Glamorama), but is confronted by...Harry Potter
merch. Shrek-shaped Halloween costumes. Mini-Blackberries and
Pilates mats for two-year-olds. And pills, above all pills,
antidepressants, anti-anxieties, anti-A.D.D.s, all aimed at the
grade-school set, but potent enough to set the pseudo-sober Brat
Pack lit star to drooling.

By the time Bret, haunted by images of his abusive father,
hunkers down in his Security-Mom-and-Soccer-Dad household,
ghostly winds blow, icky scratching noises ensue, and B.E.E. gets
e-mails from the Bank of America late at 2:40 a.m., the exact
moment of his father's death! There's also a student at the
college where B.E.E. teaches who seems to be performing a series
of copycat murders in the style of American Psycho. As the
various scare-novel accoutrements unfold, a deeper mystery
arises. Is B.E.E. creating a portrait of fear-crazed America in
the schlocky shape of an I Know What You Did Last Summer
thriller? (I hope so. I think so.) Or is he just creating a
schlocky I Know What You Did... thriller in the hopes of getting
a limited series out of it on FX, with maybe Rob Lowe as B.E.E.?
(I fear so. I think maybe.) Ellis the craftsman works overtime,
synthesizing elements from The Shining (the writer who may be
authoring his family's deaths), Cujo (doggie run amok), The Lost
Boys (teen-abductee homoerotica), and every serial-killer movie
ever made (the notion of the mass murderer as life coach and
spiritual guru). He even offers some ontological mysteries out of
Mulholland Drive. But does he "know what he's doing,"
or is he just schlock-mongering? Is he a pitch-perfect critic of
vapidity, or a victim of the vapors? Intentionally or not,
B.E.E., as per usual, perfectly captures the zeitgeist: a world
in which our deepest terrors as privileged Americans seem about
as fresh and as real as the screams coming out of some teen
bikini chick in a late-night TNT showing of Witchboard IV.

A
charming and ruthless British conman who posed as
a spy to extort huge sums from a string of
vulnerable victims was jailed for life on
Tuesday.

He had persuaded his victims to think they were
on the run from terrorists.

Robert Hendy-Freegard, a semi-literate former
salesman and barman nicknamed "The
Puppetmaster" was sentenced at Blackfriars
Crown Court in central London after being found
guilty of a string of crimes related to
deception.

The sentence brought to an end a convoluted and
often bizarre eight-month trial in which the jury
were told of the enormous influence 34-year-old
Hendy-Freegard managed to exert over his seven
victims.

One student, John Atkinson, who fell victim to
the conman, handed over £ 300 000 after
being told he had been recruited to help fight
Northern Irish terrorists.

Hendy-Freegard persuaded Atkinson to let himself
be repeatedly beaten up as a "test" to
prove he was tough enough, before abandoning
university to live on the run for three years,
fleeing imaginary terrorist gangs.

Five of the conman's victims were women, most of
whom fell in love with him. One, a just-married
secretary, left her husband and eventually ended
up destitute, sleeping on park benches.

While those conned suffered appallingly,
Hendy-Freegard -- who lived by the motto
"Lies have to be big to be convincing"
-- used their money to enjoy luxury cars,
expensive meals and five-star holidays.

Judge Deva Pillay said the effect of the conman's
actions on his victims, at least two of whom
contemplated suicide, had been appalling.

"It was plain to me as I listened to the
evidence for many months that you are an
egotistical and opinionated confidence trickster
who has shown not a shred of remorse nor
compassion for the degradation and suffering to
which your victims were subjected," he said.

The court had heard how Hendy-Freegard began the
deception in 1993 when he worked as a barman in Wales,
targeting three students at a local college.

One of these, Sarah Smith, recalled incidents
such as being taken to a so-called "safe
house" with a bucket over her head, having
to hide in cupboards to avoid visitors, and
spending three weeks in a locked bathroom with
little to eat, convinced she would be shot by a
sniper if she dare leave.

Detective Sergeant Bob Brandon, who led the
police case against the conman, said he had
enjoyed a millionaire's existence while forcing
his victims to live "in abject
poverty".

"By pretending to be a spy, he achieved
power and control over people's lives. He was not
a spy, he was a sad cruel individual," he
said. - AFP

The 59-year-old yoga and meditation teacher, in fact, thanks
the King in the acknowledgments to his new book, "The Heart
and Science of Yoga."

Perlmutter began listening to Presley's gospel recordings as a
boy growing up in Albany. He was moved by Presley's voice in a
way he would not fully appreciate until much later, after decades
of studying Eastern philosophy, world religions and mysticism.

"When I gave my attention to the music of Elvis, the rest
of the world fell away," said Perlmutter. "That was my
earliest meditation."

In his life and in his writing, Perlmutter has set out to
demystify yoga and meditation, to make it seem as natural and
essential as drawing breath.

"Meditation is nothing more than concentration of the
mind," he said. "You can be meditating when you're
golfing, playing poker, cooking, gardening or reading a
book."

Perlmutter and his wife, noted equine artist Jenness Cortez
Perlmutter, explain the ways in which they've braided yoga and
meditation into their everyday lives in the encyclopedic,
511-page tome they co-authored.

The book is an outgrowth of the American Meditation Institute
for Yoga Science and Philosophy, which the couple began at their
home in 1996. They draw a wide range of seekers to their
renovated 19th-century farmhouse and bucolic five-acre grounds in
AverillPark.

They paid $30,000 for the ramshackle spread and a tractor in
1975 during their back-to-the-land bohemian days. They bought it
from a former tractor salesman who had a religious conversion in
the house, quit his job and became a missionary for a
fundamentalist church.

"Maybe it's something in the water here," Perlmutter
said, a sly grin creasing his lips beneath a long, full beard
that is mostly gray.

Perlmutter formed the institute after studying with the late
Shri Swami Rama of the Himalayas. A dozen people are currently
enrolled in his six-week meditation course.

"These are people who have pain in their lives from work
stress, divorce, illness and other causes," Perlmutter said.
"Their goal is to live without pain."

Perlmutter, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, said he has no
desire to develop disciples. He encourages students to continue
attending their churches and synagogues.

"My job is to become a mirror and to redirect their
attention back to themselves," he said.

The couple practices what they preach. They rise at 5:30 a.m.,
offer prayers, stretch through various yoga positions and
meditate. The take a long walk along their country road, followed
by a light breakfast. He goes to his study to read and write, she
to her painter's studio. They break to cook a vegetarian meal for
lunch, their main repast of the day, followed by afternoon work
sessions and evening classes.

He wears a silver ring with an image of Ganesh, the Hindu
elephant god. His necklace is a string of rudraksha seeds.

His car, a wood-paneled 1996 Buick Roadmaster station wagon,
has a vanity license plate that reads, "Aum."

The road to yogi was full of twists and turns for Perlmutter.
His father, an Austrian Jew, emigrated from Austria to the United
States in the 1920s. He ran movie theaters in Lake George and Glens
Falls and later cafeterias.

His dream was for his son to become a lawyer.

Perlmutter, who has an older sister, did his best to oblige.

After graduating from AlbanyHigh School in 1964, he earned a
degree in political science and international relations from AmericanUniversity. He dropped out of George Washington University School
of Law after two years.

"I wasn't satisfied trying to live my father's
dream," he said.

After moving back in with his parents in the New Scotland
Avenue neighborhood, he started an alternative newspaper,
Washington Park Spirit, in 1971. He pulled together a talented
bunch of young, idealistic people like himself. They worked for
free at first, fueled by a desire to challenge the Albany
Democratic machine and to foster grass-roots activism.

The Spirit's illustrator was Jenness Cortez. Perlmutter was
editor and publisher. The two discovered they were kindred
spirits.

It was a heady time and the 20,000-circulation biweekly
community paper, but Perlmutter closed it in 1975, after four
years of publication.

"I had spent every waking hour on it and was
exhausted," Perlmutter said.

His chapter as newspaper publisher had ended and a new one, as
student of yoga and philosophy, began on farmland in AverillPark.

The unusual arc of his career would make a good song -- gospel
perhaps. And sung by Elvis, his guru, of course.